Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism

Adapted from:
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/literary_theor
y_and_schools_of_criticism/index.html

Introduction

A very basic way of thinking about literary theory is that these ideas act as different
lenses critics use to view and talk about art, literature, and even culture. These
different lenses allow critics to consider works of art based on certain assumptions
within that school of theory. The different lenses also allow critics to focus on
particular aspects of a work they consider important.
For example, if a critic is working with certain Marxist theories, s/he might focus on
how the characters in a story interact based on their economic situation. If a critic is
working with post-colonial theories, s/he might consider the same story but look at
how characters from colonial powers (Britain, France, and even America) treat
characters from, say, Africa or the Caribbean. Hopefully, after reading through and
working with the resources in this area of the OWL, literary theory will become a little
easier to understand and use.

Disclaimer

Please note that the schools of literary criticism and their explanations included here
are by no means the only ways of distinguishing these separate areas of theory.
Indeed, many critics use tools from two or more schools in their work. Some would
define differently or greatly expand the (very) general statements given here. Our
explanations are meant only as starting places for your own investigation into literary
theory. We encourage you to use the list of scholars and works provided for each
school to further your understanding of these theories.
We also recommend the following secondary sources for study of literary theory:

• The Critical Tradition: Classical Texts and Contemporary Trends, 1998, edited
by David H. Richter
• Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, 1999, by Lois Tyson
• Beginning Theory, 2002, by Peter Barry

Although philosophers, critics, educators and authors have been writing about writing
since ancient times, contemporary schools of literary theory have cohered from
these discussions and now influence how scholars look at and write about literature.
The following sections overview these movements in critical theory. Though the
timeline below roughly follows a chronological order, we have placed some schools
closer together because they are so closely aligned.

Timeline (most of these overlap)

• Moral Criticism, Dramatic Construction (~360 BC-present)
• Formalism, New Criticism, Neo-Aristotelian Criticism (1930s-present)
• Psychoanalytic Criticism, Jungian Criticism(1930s-present)
• Marxist Criticism (1930s-present)
• Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present)
• Structuralism/Semiotics (1920s-present)
• Post-Structuralism/Deconstruction (1966-present)
• New Historicism/Cultural Studies (1980s-present)
• Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present)
• Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)
• Gender/Queer Studies (1970s-present)
• Critical Race Theory (1970s-present)
• Critical Disability Studies (1990s-present)
Marxist Criticism (1930s-present)

Whom Does It Benefit?

Based on the theories of Karl Marx (and so influenced by philosopher Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel), this school concerns itself with class differences, economic and
otherwise, as well as the implications and complications of the capitalist system:
"Marxism attempts to reveal the ways in which our socioeconomic system is the
ultimate source of our experience" (Tyson 277).
Theorists working in the Marxist tradition, therefore, are interested in answering the
overarching question, whom does it [the work, the effort, the policy, the road, etc.]
benefit? The elite? The middle class? Marxist critics are also interested in how the
lower or working classes are oppressed - in everyday life and in literature.

The Material Dialectic

The Marxist school follows a process of thinking called the material dialectic. This
belief system maintains that "...what drives historical change are the material
realities of the economic base of society, rather than the ideological superstructure of
politics, law, philosophy, religion, and art that is built upon that economic base"
(Richter 1088).
Marx asserts that "...stable societies develop sites of resistance: contradictions build
into the social system that ultimately lead to social revolution and the development of
a new society upon the old" (1088). This cycle of contradiction, tension, and
revolution must continue: there will always be conflict between the upper, middle,
and lower (working) classes and this conflict will be reflected in literature and other
forms of expression - art, music, movies, etc.

The Revolution

The continuing conflict between the classes will lead to upheaval and revolution by
oppressed peoples and form the groundwork for a new order of society and
economics where capitalism is abolished. According to Marx, the revolution will be
led by the working class (others think peasants will lead the uprising) under the
guidance of intellectuals. Once the elite and middle class are overthrown, the
intellectuals will compose an equal society where everyone owns everything
(socialism - not to be confused with Soviet or Maoist Communism).
Though a staggering number of different nuances exist within this school of literary
theory, Marxist critics generally work in areas covered by the following questions.
Typical questions:

• Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is accepted/successful/believed,

etc.?
• What is the social class of the author?
• Which class does the work claim to represent?
• What values does it reinforce?
• What values does it subvert?
• What conflict can be seen between the values the work champions and those
it portrays?
• What social classes do the characters represent?
• How do characters from different classes interact or conflict?

Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding

of this theory:

• Karl Marx - (with Friedrich Engels) The Communist Manifesto, 1848; Das
Kapital, 1867; "Consciousness Derived from Material Conditions" from The
German Ideology, 1932; "On Greek Art in Its Time" from A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy, 1859
• Leon Trotsky - "Literature and Revolution," 1923
• Georg Lukács - "The Ideology of Modernism," 1956
• Walter Benjamin - "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"
1936
• Theodor W. Adorno
• Louis Althusser - Reading Capital, 1965
• Terry Eagleton - Marxism and Literary Criticism, Criticism and Ideology, 1976
• Frederic Jameson - Marxism and Form, The Political Unconscious, 1971
• Jürgen Habermas - The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 1990
Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present)

What Do You Think?

At its most basic level, reader-response criticism considers readers' reactions to

literature as vital to interpreting the meaning of the text. However, reader-response
criticism can take a number of different approaches. A critic deploying reader-
response theory can use a psychoanalytic lens, a feminist lens, or even a
structuralist lens. What these different lenses have in common when using a reader-
response approach is they maintain "...that what a text is cannot be separated from
what it does" (Tyson 154).
Tyson explains that "...reader-response theorists share two beliefs: 1) that the role of
the reader cannot be omitted from our understanding of literature and 2) that readers
do not passively consume the meaning presented to them by an objective literary
text; rather they actively make the meaning they find in literature" (154). In this way,
reader-response theory shares common ground with some of the deconstructionists
discussed in the Post-structural area when they talk about "the death of the author,"
or her displacement as the (author)itarian figure in the text.

Typical questions:

• How does the interaction of text and reader create meaning?

• What does a phrase-by-phrase analysis of a short literary text, or a key
portion of a longer text, tell us about the reading experience prestructured by
(built into) that text?
• Do the sounds/shapes of the words as they appear on the page or how they
are spoken by the reader enhance or change the meaning of the word/work?
• How might we interpret a literary text to show that the reader's response is, or
is analogous to, the topic of the story?
• What does the body of criticism published about a literary text suggest about
the critics who interpreted that text and/or about the reading experience
produced by that text? (Tyson 191)

Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding

of this theory:

• Peter Rabinowitz - Before Reading, 1987

• Stanley Fish - Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive
Communities, 1980
• Elizabeth Freund - The Return of the Reader: Reader-Response Criticism,
1987
• Norman Holland - The Dynamics of Literary Response, 1968
Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)

Feminist criticism is concerned with "the ways in which literature (and other cultural
productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological
oppression of women" (Tyson 83). This school of theory looks at how aspects of our
culture are inherently patriarchal (male dominated) and aims to expose misogyny in
writing about women, which can take explicit and implicit forms. This misogyny,
Tyson reminds us, can extend into diverse areas of our culture: "Perhaps the most
chilling example...is found in the world of modern medicine, where drugs prescribed
for both sexes often have been tested on male subjects only" (85).
Feminist criticism is also concerned with less obvious forms of marginalization such
as the exclusion of women writers from the traditional literary canon: "...unless the
critical or historical point of view is feminist, there is a tendency to underrepresent
the contribution of women writers" (Tyson 84).

Common Space in Feminist Theories

Though a number of different approaches exist in feminist criticism, there exist some
areas of commonality. This list is excerpted from Tyson (92):

1. Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and

psychologically; patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which women
are oppressed.
2. In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is marginalized,
defined only by her difference from male norms and values.
3. All of Western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal
ideology, for example, in the Biblical portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin and
death in the world.
4. While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our
gender (scales of masculine and feminine).
5. All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its
ultimate goal to change the world by prompting gender equality.
6. Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and
experience, including the production and experience of literature, whether we
are consciously aware of these issues or not.

Feminist criticism has, in many ways, followed what some theorists call the three
waves of feminism:

1. First Wave Feminism - late 1700s-early 1900's: writers like Mary

Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792) highlight the
inequalities between the sexes. Activists like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria
Woodhull contribute to the women's suffrage movement, which leads to
 National Universal Suffrage in 1920 with the passing of the Nineteenth
Amendment.
2. Second Wave Feminism - early 1960s-late 1970s: building on more equal
working conditions necessary in America during World War II, movements
such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), formed in 1966, cohere
feminist political activism. Writers like Simone de Beauvoir (Le Deuxième
Sexe, 1949) and Elaine Showalter established the groundwork for the
dissemination of feminist theories dove-tailed with the American Civil Rights
movement.
3. Third Wave Feminism - early 1990s-present: resisting the perceived
essentialist (over generalized, over simplified) ideologies and a white,
heterosexual, middle class focus of second wave feminism, third wave
feminism borrows from post-structural and contemporary gender and race
theories (see below) to expand on marginalized populations' experiences.
Writers like Alice Walker work to "...reconcile it [feminism] with the concerns of
the black community...[and] the survival and wholeness of her people, men
and women both, and for the promotion of dialog and community as well as
for the valorization of women and of all the varieties of work women perform"
(Tyson 107).

Typical questions:

• How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?

• What are the power relationships between men and women (or characters
assuming male/female roles)?
• How are male and female roles defined?
• What constitutes masculinity and femininity?
• How do characters embody these traits?
• Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this
change others’ reactions to them?
• What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically,
socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy?
• What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of
resisting patriarchy?
• What does the work say about women's creativity?
• What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics
tell us about the operation of patriarchy?
• What role does the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary
tradition? (Tyson)

Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding

of this theory:

• Mary Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792

• Simone de Beauvoir - Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex), 1949
• Julia Kristeva - About Chinese Women, 1977
• Elaine Showalter - A Literature of Their Own, 1977; "Toward a Feminist
Poetics," 1979
• Deborah E. McDowell - "New Directions for Black Feminist Criticism," 1980
• Alice Walker - In Search of Our Mother's Gardens, 1983
 • Lillian S. Robinson - "Treason out Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary
Canon," 1983

Ecocriticism (1960-Present)

Ecocriticism is an umbrella term under which a variety of approaches fall; this can
make it a difficult term to define. As ecocritic Lawrence Buell says, ecocriticism is an
“increasingly heterogeneous movement” (1). But, “simply put, ecocriticism is the
study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment” (Glotfelty
xviii). Emerging in the 1980s on the shoulders of the environmental movement begun
in the 1960s with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, ecocriticism has
been and continues to be an “earth-centered approach” (Glotfelty xviii) the complex
intersections between environment and culture, believing that “human culture is
connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it” (Glotfelty xix).
Ecocriticism is interdisciplinary, calling for collaboration between natural scientists,
writers, literary critics, anthropologists, historians, and more. Ecocriticism asks us to
examine ourselves and the world around us, critiquing the way that we represent,
interact with, and construct the environment, both “natural” and manmade. At the
heart of ecocriticism, many maintain, is “a commitment to environmentality from
whatever critical vantage point” (Buell 11). The “challenge” for ecocritics is “keep[ing]
one eye on the ways in which ‘nature’ is always […] culturally constructed, and the
other on the fact that nature really exists” (Garrard 10). Similar to critical traditions
examining gender and race, ecocriticism deals not only with the socially-constructed,
often dichotomous categories we create for reality, but with reality itself.

First and Second Waves

Several scholars have divided Ecocriticism into two waves (Buell)(Glotfelty),

recognizing the first as taking place throughout the eighties and nineties. The first
wave is characterized by its emphasis on nature writing as an object of study and as
a meaningful practice (Buell). Central to this wave and to the majority of ecocritics
still today is the environmental crisis of our age, seeing it as the duty of both the
humanities and the natural sciences to raise awareness and invent solutions for a
problem that is both cultural and physical. As such, a primary concern in first-wave
ecocriticism was to “speak for” nature (Buell 11). This is, perhaps, where ecocriticism
gained its reputation as an “avowedly political mode of analysis” (Garrard 3). This
wave, unlike its successor, kept the cultural distinction between human and nature,
promoting the value of nature.
The second wave is particularly modern in its breaking down of some of the long-
standing distinctions between the human and the non-human, questioning these very
concepts (Garrard 5). The boundaries between the human and the non-human,
nature and non-nature are discussed as constructions, and ecocritics challenge
these constructions, asking (among other things) how they frame the environmental
crisis and its solution. This wave brought with it a redefinition of the term
“environment,” expanding its meaning to include both “nature” and the urban (Buell
11). Out of this expansion has grown the ecojustice movement, one of the more
political of ecocriticism branches that is “raising an awareness of class, race, and
gender through ecocritical reading of text” (Bressler 236), often examining the plight
of the poorest of a population who are the victims of pollution are seen as having
less access to “nature” in the traditional sense.
These waves are not exactly distinct, and there is debate over what exactly
constitutes the two. For instance, some ecocritics will claim activism has been a
defining feature of ecocriticism from the beginning, while others see activism as a
defining feature of primarily the first wave. While the exact features attributed to each
wave may be disputed, it is clear that Ecocriticism continues to evolve and has
undergone several shifts in attitude and direction since its conception.

Tropes and Approaches

Pastoral
This trope, found in much British and American literature, focuses on the dichotomy
between urban and rural life, is “deeply entrenched in Western culture”(Garrard 33).
At the forefront of works which display pastoralism is a general idealization of the
nature and the rural and the demonization of the urban. Often, such works show a
“retreat” from city life to the country while romanticizing rural life, depicting an
idealized rural existence that “obscures” the reality of the hard work living in such
areas requires (Garrard 33). GregGarrardidentifies three branches of the pastoral:
Classic Pastoral, “characterized by nostalgia” (37) and an appreciation of nature as a
place for human relaxation and reflection; Romantic Pastoral, a period after the
Industrial Revolution that saw “rural independence” as desirable against the
expansion of the urban; and American Pastoralism, which “emphasize[d]
agrarianism” (49) and represents land as a resource to be cultivated, with farmland
often creating a boundary between the urban and the wilderness.

Wilderness
An interesting focus for many ecocritics is the way that wilderness is represented in
literature and popular culture. This approach examines the ways in which wilderness
is constructed, valued, and engaged. Representations of wilderness in British and
American culture can be separated into a few main tropes. First, Old World
wilderness displays wilderness as a place beyond the borders of civilization, wherein
wilderness is treated as a “threat,” a place of “exile” (Garrard 62). This trope can be
seen in Biblical tales of creation and early British culture. Old World wilderness is
often conflated with demonic practices in early American literature (Garrard 62). New
World wilderness, seen in portrayals of wilderness in later American literature,
applies the pastoral trope of the “retreat” to wilderness itself, seeing wilderness not
as a place to fear, but as a place to find sanctuary. The New World wilderness trope
has informed much of the “American identity,” and often constructs encounters with
the wilderness that lead to a more “authentic existence” (Garrard 71).

Ecofeminism
As a branch of ecocriticism, ecofeminism primarily “analyzes the interconnection of
the oppression of women and nature” (Bressler 236). Drawing parallels between
domination of land and the domination of men over women, ecofeminists examine
these hierarchical, gendered relationships, in which the land is often equated with
the feminine, seen as a fertile resources and the property of man. The ecofeminism
approach can be divided into two camps. The first, sometimes referred to as radical
ecofeminism, reverses the patriarchal domination of man over woman and nature,
“exalting nature,” the non-human, and the emotional” (Garrard 24). This approach
embraces the idea that women are inherently closer to nature biologically, spiritually,
and emotionally. The second camp, which followed the first historically, maintains
that there is no such thing as a “feminine essence” that would make women more
likely to connect with nature (Garrard 25). Of course, ecofeminism is a highly diverse
and complex branch, and many writers have undertaken the job of examining the
hierarchical relationships structured in our cultural representations of nature and of
women and other oppressed groups. In particular, studies regarding race have
followed in this trend, identifying groups that have been historically seen as
somehow closer to nature. The way Native Americans, for instance, have been
described as “primitive” and portrayed as “dwelling in harmony with nature,” despite
facts to the contrary.Garrardoffers an examination of this trope, calling it the
Ecological Indian (Garrard 120). Similar studies regarding representations and
oppression of aboriginals have surfaced, highlighting the misconceptions of these
peoples as somehow “behind” Europeans, needing to progress from “a natural to a
civilized state” (Garrard 125).

Typical Questions

Taking an ecocritical approach to a topic means asking questions not only of a

primary source such as literature, but asking larger questions about cultural attitudes
towards and definitions of nature. Generally, ecocriticism can be applied to a primary
source by either interpreting a text through an ecocritical lens, with an eye towards
nature, or examining an ecocritical trope within the text. The questions below are
examples of questions you might ask both when working with a primary source and
when developing a research question that might have a broader perspective.

• How is nature represented in this text?

• How has the concept of nature changed over time?
• How is the setting of the play/film/text related to the environment?
• What is the influence on metaphors and representations of the land and the
environment on how we treat it?
• How do we see issues of environmental disaster and crises reflected in
popular culture and literary works?
• How are animals represented in this text and what is their relationship to
humans?
• How do the roles or representations of men and women towards the
environment differ in this play/film/text/etc.
• Where is the environment placed in the power hierarchy?
• How is nature empowered or oppressed in this work?
• What parallels can be drawn between the sufferings and oppression of groups
of people (women, minorities, immigrants, etc.) and treatment of the land?
• What rhetorical moves are used by environmentalists, and what can we learn
from them about our cultural attitudes towards nature?
There are many more questions than these to be asked, and a large variety of
approaches already exist that are asking different questions. Do some research to
check on the state of ecocritical discussion in your own area of interest.

Further Resources
There are many more approaches to analyzing interactions between culture and
nature, many of which are interdisciplinary. The following texts are recommended to
help you start exploring other avenues of Ecocriticsm.

Theory and Criticism

• Lawrence Buell - “The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing,

and the Formation of American Culture” (1995) and “Toxic Discourse,” 1998
• Charles Bressler - Literary criticism: an introduction to theory and practice,
1999
• Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm – The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in
Literary Ecology, (1996)
• GregGarrard– Ecocriticism, 2004
• Donna Haraway - "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-
Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," (1991)
• ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (Journal)
• Joseph Makus - The Comedy of Survival: literary ecology and a play
ethic, (1972)
• Leo Marx – The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in
America, (1964)
• Raymond Williams - The Country and The City, (1975)

Literature & Literary Figures

Edward Abbey

• Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (1968)

• Appalachian Wilderness (1970)
• The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975)

Mary Hunter Austin

• The Land of Little Rain (1903)

John Muir

• A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916)

• Studies in the Sierra (1950)

Henry David Thoreau

• Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854)

Williams Wordsworth
 • Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (1798)
• Lyrical Ballads, with Other Poems (1800)

Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present)

History is Written by the Victors

Post-colonial criticism is similar to cultural studies, but it assumes a unique

perspective on literature and politics that warrants a separate discussion.
Specifically, post-colonial critics are concerned with literature produced by colonial
powers and works produced by those who were/are colonized. Post-colonial theory
looks at issues of power, economics, politics, religion, and culture and how these
elements work in relation to colonial hegemony (Western colonizers controlling the
colonized).

Therefore, a post-colonial critic might be interested in works such as Daniel

Defoe's Robinson Crusoe where colonial "...ideology [is] manifest in Crusoe's
colonialist attitude toward the land upon which he's shipwrecked and toward the
black man he 'colonizes' and names Friday" (Tyson 377). In addition, post-colonial
theory might point out that "...despite Heart of Darkness's (Joseph Conrad) obvious
anti-colonist agenda, the novel points to the colonized population as the standard of
savagery to which Europeans are contrasted" (Tyson 375). Post-colonial criticism
also takes the form of literature composed by authors that critique Euro-centric
hegemony.

A Unique Perspective on Empire

Seminal post-colonial writers such as Nigerian author Chinua Achebe and Kenyan
author Ngugi wa Thiong'o have written a number of stories recounting the suffering
of colonized people. For example, in Things Fall Apart, Achebe details the strife and
devastation that occurred when British colonists began moving inland from the
Nigerian coast.
Rather than glorifying the exploratory nature of European colonists as they expanded
their sphere of influence, Achebe narrates the destructive events that led to the
death and enslavement of thousands of Nigerians when the British imposed their
Imperial government. In turn, Achebe points out the negative effects (and shifting
ideas of identity and culture) caused by the imposition of Western religion and
economics on Nigerians during colonial rule.

Power, Hegemony, and Literature

Post-colonial criticism also questions the role of the Western literary canon and
Western history as dominant forms of knowledge making. The terms "First World,"
"Second World," "Third World" and "Fourth World" nations are critiqued by post-
colonial critics because they reinforce the dominant positions of Western cultures
populating First World status. This critique includes the literary canon and histories
written from the perspective of First World cultures. So, for example, a post-colonial
critic might question the works included in "the canon" because the canon does not
contain works by authors outside Western culture.
Moreover, the authors included in the canon often reinforce colonial hegemonic
ideology, such as Joseph Conrad. Western critics might consider Heart of
Darkness an effective critique of colonial behavior. But post-colonial theorists and
authors might disagree with this perspective: "...as Chinua Achebe observes, the
novel's condemnation of European is based on a definition of Africans as savages:
beneath their veneer of civilization, the Europeans are, the novel tells us, as barbaric
as the Africans. And indeed, Achebe notes, the novel portrays Africans as a pre-
historic mass of frenzied, howling, incomprehensible barbarians..." (Tyson 374-375).

Typical questions:

• How does the literary text, explicitly or allegorically, represent various aspects
of colonial oppression?
• What does the text reveal about the problematics of post-colonial identity,
including the relationship between personal and cultural identity and such
issues as double consciousness and hybridity?
• What person(s) or groups does the work identify as "other" or stranger? How
are such persons/groups described and treated?
• What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-
colonialist resistance?
• What does the text reveal about the operations of cultural difference - the
ways in which race, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, cultural beliefs,
and customs combine to form individual identity - in shaping our perceptions
of ourselves, others, and the world in which we live?
• How does the text respond to or comment upon the characters, themes, or
assumptions of a canonized (colonialist) work?
• Are there meaningful similarities among the literatures of different post-
colonial populations?
• How does a literary text in the Western canon reinforce or undermine
colonialist ideology through its representation of colonialization and/or its
inappropriate silence about colonized peoples? (Tyson 378-379)

Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding

of this theory:
Criticism

• Edward Said - Orientalism, 1978; Culture and Imperialism, 1994

• Kamau Brathwaite - The History of the Voice, 1979
• Gayatri Spivak - In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, 1987
• Dominick LaCapra - The Bounds of Race: Perspectives on Hegemony and
Resistance, 1991
• Homi Bhabha - The Location of Culture, 1994
Literature and non-fiction

• Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart, 1958

• Ngugi wa Thiong'o - The River Between, 1965
• Sembene Ousmane - God's Bits of Wood, 1962
• Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - Heat and Dust, 1975
• Buchi Emecheta - The Joys of Motherhood, 1979
• Keri Hulme - The Bone People, 1983
• Robertson Davies - What's Bred in the Bone, 1985
• Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day, 1988
• Bharati Mukherjee - Jasmine, 1989
• Jill Ker Conway - The Road from Coorain, 1989
• Helena Norberg-Hodge - Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, 1991
• Michael Ondaatje - The English Patient, 1992
• Gita Mehta - A River Sutra, 1993
• Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things, 1997
• Patrick Chamoiseau - Texaco, 1997